Belonging Versus Mattering
by McGonagall's Bola
Summary: Severus Snapy only realized too late that 'belonging somewhere' didn't necessarily mean those you belong with care.


INSPIRED by my message exchange with _McGonagall'sSentinel_ yesterday.

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The young boy's fingers clutched onto the wooden doorframe. Tears streamed down his cheeks at the sound of their screaming, his father loudest as usual, even if Eileen wasn't much better. It had been like this since forever. He had never experienced much else in his nearly ten years of life. Eileen and Tobias didn't seem to really care if he was listening or not. Part of him wondered, deep down, what they might be like when he wasn't home. Could it still be any worse than this at all? A shudder ran through his small body as he heard the distinct sound of slapping –– his father's hand or fist connecting with his mother's cheek, if the small cry that followed could be counted as indication.

Severus Snape cowered at the foot of the staircase. He wanted to stop them from hurting each other, but he knew they were just as bad as each other. When he heard the footsteps, he got upright and turned, making to just run up the stairs as fast as he could and hide away in his bedroom, but it was too late already. By the time he had gotten upright and set a foot on the bottom step of the staircase, his father had appeared in the doorway, smelling of cheap whisky and anger ominously flaring in his dark eyes like it often did. Young Severus hated the fact he looked so alike him, hated looking in a mirror to recognize his father in himself, see the similarities in the reflection with a man who had never done an effort to care about him. For so many years, little Severus always had tried his hardest to be noticed by him in any way he could have thought of.

There had been a little while when he had come home black and beaten after having gotten into some fights and his folks had gotten contacted. That had lasted a handful of weeks only, though, because it had resulted in him just getting more beatings at home from Tobias, for 'being a sissy who let himself get beaten' and 'bothering him in his spare time with all that utter nonsense'. That spare time was nearly exclusively wasted at pubs or at home in fights with his wife.

There had been a time the little boy had worked harder for school than ever, but neither his mother nor father had done much more than growl in what he thought was approval at his good grades –– or at least as close as he was going to get to that. A beating had not been entirely rare in the cases he came home with bad or less-than-excellent ones –– which was as bad. His mother hadn't only seldom slapped his hands when she had caught them fishing in the cookie jar when he had been younger, but most physical aggression still did come from his father; that and his rants at his only son of how useless and pathetic he was basically the only form of 'communication' between them. Severus often wondered why and then blamed his mother for never stepping between them. She was after all a witch. She could have stopped him and killed him, but she hadn't and wouldn't. Especially whenever Severus had just talked to Lily, heard her stories of how Mr. and Mrs. Evans treated each other so unlike his folks did, he had wondered if you could call that particular reason why they obviously remained together love.

"Had I not told you to go to your bedroom and stay there until morning?!" Tobias yelled, grabbing little Severus by his arm, yanking him up with one hand, roughly dragging him up the stairs. Severus could barely follow him with his small feet dangling a few inches above the steps he tried to reach, thus each step smacking against the one higher. He tried not to scream, because he knew it would make the man that was his father even more mad. He tried not to cry even though Tobias was hurting him and tears swam in his eyes. At least they didn't even care where he was during the day –– maybe he could see Lily.

Lily had always been special to him, and he thought that maybe she was the only companion he had ever made in Cokeworth. They had met the summer before, when he had at last dared to reveal himself after having watched her for a few days in row in the park with her older sister and had noticed that she was 'like him', showing quite obvious signs of the weird stuff he sometimes did as well, which his mother had not-so-enthusiastically called magic. With her, he felt like he was noticed, like he actually mattered –– a strange but still-nice feeling.

While he had looked forward for months, for years, to going to Hogwarts, he would only later know that it came with quite a price, namely the price of her friendship and maybe a part of his sanity at it as well. It would take him years to realize the gift he had lost and the little he had gotten by his actions.

The Sorting Hat Sorted him in Slytherin. By going to Hogwarts, there was not only a world in which he really belonged and where he didn't have to listen to his mother and father's continuous arguing, have to endure his father's anger, there was also a House in which he belonged with people who somehow resembled him not in magical nature alone, but in personality to a certain extent as well. He was incredibly blinded, though. There were certain differences between him and the others as well, like for instance their thoughts about wizards and witches like Lily, finding him torn between his House and his friendship with her. Both could not seem to co-exist at the same time, it soon became clear to Severus Snape. While Lily didn't condemn him being in Slytherin House in any which way, the fellow Slytherins often condemned him for talking to her. Severus finally belonged somewhere, and their Pureblood ideas about 'Mudblood Gryffindors' and how those really should be treated seemed to be part of belonging…

At that time he had been too young to know that 'belonging' in a House with others didn't necessarily mean they cared, too young to recognize the importance of Lily's friendship… until it was too late; until Lily stopped trying to make him see what he wouldn't until later, and it was something he had to live with for the rest of his short life, before he had the chance to do better.


End file.
